Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

fk · 2006-08-22 13:30:42

Hi

OK I must reinstall Arch on my Laptop , I have made a few mistakes e.g too small partitions... and I will finally delete Windows , I don't need this anymore.

I will go to install at the next weekend and at the moment I thinking about a few things.

What you are think about these partition shema?(I have 80GB)

/dev/sda1 2GB swap
/dev/sda2 /boot/100MB ext2 ? or ext3 ?
/dev/sda3 extendet
/dev/sda5 /root how big? which filesystem?
/dev/sda6 /home

and what is with /tmp as tempfs? How big , is this good?

And what is witch a extra partition for pacman database?
how big ? which filesystem?

elasticdog · 2006-08-22 14:30:54

Yarrrr...I like answering partioning questions. I too have an 80GB drive and would offer these suggestions. First of all, this is how mine is set up:

Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7 reiserfs     23G  9.1G   14G  40% /
none         tmpfs   1014M   32K 1014M   1% /tmp
/dev/hda1     ext2     92M   19M   68M  22% /boot
/dev/hda6 reiserfs    3.9G  1.3G  2.6G  33% /var
/dev/hda8 reiserfs     46G  1.7G   45G   4% /home

· For your <code>/boot</code> partition, I'd go with ext2 since there's no real need for journaling there.
· For swap size, I'd probably want to know how much RAM you have. I made my swap size 2GB as well, but highly doubt that it really needs to be that big (I have 2GB of RAM on top of that). I usually tend to err on the side of saftey though, and knew I wouldn't miss the extra 1GB I was debating over.
· If you haven't read up on the pros and cons of differing file systems, I'd probably just stick with ext3 for everything that's not <code>/boot</code> since it's fast, reliable, and easy to tweak.
· Rather than just splitting off the pacman database into its own partition, I'd recommend putting all of <code>/var</code> on its own partition so you'll protect your machine from growing logs, email, and other things too.
· I use <code>tmpfs</code> for my <code>/tmp</code> directory, but I'd really only recommend it if you have over 1GB of RAM in your machine since it doesn't speed things up a great extent. Basically the idea behind using it is that it will make your temporary operations faster by keeping them in RAM and it won't matter if the data stored there is volatile because stuff in <code>/tmp</code> isn't guaranteed to be there in between reboots anyway. As far as size, I just let it default to 1/2 of the size of your RAM (as a maximum), and it will manage itself as needed. I believe it will also fallback to using the HDD if it fills its maximum, so you don't have to worry about dataloss either (I could be wrong on that though).

fk · 2006-08-22 15:53:20

Yarrrr...I like answering partioning questions.

I'am sorry, I know of these kind of Questions....

I have also 2GB RAM

Must the tmpfs 1GB have?

Hwo is your / so big :shock:

OK I will think about your tipps, thanks

Another Question:

What about mount options?

Who is recomment to mount readonly and noexecute, and who not?

elasticdog · 2006-08-22 20:52:10

The tmpfs doesn't really take up 1GB, it has the ability to grow that big before it will start using disk storage. Right now mine is only 28KB and hardly ever gets much bigger. So you shouldn't be concerned about that RAM going to waste...it won't. You can limit it to whatever size you want, but I just left it at the default of using 1/2 of RAM. I can't recall a time that I've ever seen my RAM usage ever go above 1GB anyway, and my swap is pretty much always zero.

Now that you mention it, my / partition is a bit full. I do have quite a bit of stuff installed, but nothing too out of the ordinary I would think for a desktop machine. Perhaps I'll have to look into that one of these days.

As far as mounting options, here's my <code>/etc/fstab</code>:

# 
# /etc/fstab: Static file system information
#

# <filesystem>   <dir>          <type>       <options>              <dump>  <pass>
none             /dev/pts       devpts       defaults               0       0
none             /dev/shm       tmpfs        defaults               0       0
none             /tmp           tmpfs        defaults               0       0

/dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom     iso9660,udf  ro,user,noauto,unhide  0       0
/dev/sda1        /mnt/pendrive  vfat         rw,user,noauto,async   0       0

/dev/hda1        /boot          ext2         noatime                0       1
/dev/hda5        none           swap         sw                     0       0
/dev/hda6        /var           reiserfs     noatime,notail         0       0
/dev/hda7        /              reiserfs     noatime,notail         0       0
/dev/hda8        /home          reiserfs     noatime,notail         0       0

# End of file

If you're sticking with ext3, then you can drop the notail options as that isn't available when using that file system. Also for the <code>pass</code> column, you'll want your <code>/boot</code> directory to be fsck'ed (file system checked) first, so put it at 1 like mine is, but then you'll want your other files systems to get checked at a lower priority, so put them at 2. I have mine set to 0 because reiserfs automatically fscks the partitions on mount.

mr.MikyMaus · 2006-08-23 10:25:34

How about LVM? You don't have to bother about partitions anymore than...
Just have one 100MB /boot on ext2 and the rest let live in LVM control. I have that on my desktop and I'm fully statisfied.

On my laptop however, I have this:

[root@ghoulie ~]# cat /etc/fstab 
# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file>        <dir>         <type>    <options>          <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0

/dev/cdrom             /mnt/cd   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/dvd               /mnt/dvd  udf       ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/fd0               /mnt/fl   vfat      user,noauto             0      0

/dev/hda4 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/hda1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/mmcblk0p1    /mnt/flash auto defaults,user,noauto 0 0

[root@ghoulie ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1            8476        8485       80325   83  Linux
/dev/hda2              66        8475    67553325   83  Linux
/dev/hda3            8486        9729     9992430   83  Linux
/dev/hda4               1          65      522081   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

/dev/mmcblk0p1   *           1         475       60784    6  FAT16

I keep all except boot and swap in one partition. I think it's simple. hda3 is reserverd for another operating system (SUSE Linux at the moment, but I may be forced to install Windows there because of school:/ )

To swap: I've never had more than ~.5GB swap space and even on my desktop, where currently I have 256MB of RAM, I never had any memory problems. The same holds true for my laptop. ~520MB swap and 500MB RAM (some taken by integrated graphics) and as far as I know, the swap was never touched. Imho is good to have swap at least as large as RAM, to be able to use suspend2.

Didn't know about tmpfs thoug, good tip, going to try:)

-M.

detto · 2006-08-23 11:15:22

Well here's another suggest: 3 partitions -> one root, 2nd /var, 3rd /home.
u can then link your /tmp to /var/tmp with 'ln' command. this partition should then be about 5-10 gb imo.
for me this always was pretty useful cause i have not tha much partitions but var and tmp are on a reiserfs because of its small-file-bonus iheard about, all others are ext3
good luck,

cheers,
detto

Sigi · 2006-08-23 11:27:59

elasticdog wrote:

Now that you mention it, my / partition is a bit full. I do have quite a bit of stuff installed, but nothing too out of the ordinary I would think for a desktop machine. Perhaps I'll have to look into that one of these days.

"filelight" does a great job in cases like yours -> researching where all the free space went...

fk · 2006-08-23 22:08:07

OK thanks to all, I have do this

[flo@thinkpad ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6              14G  1.2G   12G   9% /
none                 1010M     0 1010M   0% /dev/shm
none                 1010M  1.4M 1008M   1% /tmp
/dev/sda7             4.6G  521M  3.9G  12% /var
/dev/sda8              54G  199M   51G   1% /home

[flo@thinkpad ~]$

elasticdog · 2006-08-24 01:56:41

Looks good matey...glad you got it figured out!

elasticdog · 2006-08-31 20:36:49

Not that anybody cared about this issue, but I figured out why my / root partion was so full...UT2K4 is taking up 7.1GB!!! Might be time to unistall it, as I don't really play right now anyway.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-08-22 13:30:42

Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#2 2006-08-22 14:30:54

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#3 2006-08-22 15:53:20

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#4 2006-08-22 20:52:10

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#5 2006-08-23 10:25:34

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#6 2006-08-23 11:15:22

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#7 2006-08-23 11:27:59

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#8 2006-08-23 22:08:07

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#9 2006-08-24 01:56:41

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

#10 2006-08-31 20:36:49

Re: Reisnstall Arch need a few tipps [Solved]

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